TY - JOUR
T1 - Obligate costs of parental care to offspring
T2 - Egg brooding-induced hypoxia creates smaller, slower and weaker python offspring
AU - Stahlschmidt, Zachary R.
AU - Denardo, Dale
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors acknowledge the financial support of EPSRC Grant EP/K029118/1 , Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) and US Army International Technology Center-Atlantic . H. Liu would like to thank The Royal Society for funding his University Research Fellowship. I. Ramiro acknowledges UPM “Estancia breve de Doctorado” financial support. The authors would like to thank Prof. A. Luque, Prof. A. Martí and Dr. E. Antolín for valuable discussion.
PY - 2009/10
Y1 - 2009/10
N2 - Python egg brooding typifies parental care because it consists of multiple behaviours that provide for multiple developmental needs. For example, tightly coiling around the eggs benefits embryonic water balance, but periodic female postural adjustments improve embryonic gas exchange. Regardless of these postural adjustments, egg brooding creates a hypoxic intra-clutch environment that constrains embryonic metabolism. We further examined this novel and useful parental care model to determine: (1) any fitness-related costs of egg brooding to offspring; (2) whether any long-term costs are alleviated by postural adjustments. We artificially incubated Children's python (Antaresia childreni) clutches and modulated oxygen partial pressure (PO2) to create three treatments: normoxic (NRM, 20.3 kPa O2), brooding [BRD, PO 2 profile typical of clutch PO2 (PO2clutch) in maternally brooded clutches, 15.8-19.3 kPa O2] and low (LOW, predicted PO2 profile of maternally brooded PO2clutch if females did not make postural adjustments, 14.4-18.6 kPa O2). Using various metrics from ∼12 days pre-hatching to 14 days post-hatching, we demonstrated that NRM offspring were larger, faster and stronger than BRD offspring. As only hatchling heart mass differed between BRD and LOW treatments (LOW > BRD), postural adjustments may not alleviate hypoxia-related costs to embryos. Our results demonstrate that parental care may represent a compromise between competing developmental needs and thus entails obligate costs to the offspring.
AB - Python egg brooding typifies parental care because it consists of multiple behaviours that provide for multiple developmental needs. For example, tightly coiling around the eggs benefits embryonic water balance, but periodic female postural adjustments improve embryonic gas exchange. Regardless of these postural adjustments, egg brooding creates a hypoxic intra-clutch environment that constrains embryonic metabolism. We further examined this novel and useful parental care model to determine: (1) any fitness-related costs of egg brooding to offspring; (2) whether any long-term costs are alleviated by postural adjustments. We artificially incubated Children's python (Antaresia childreni) clutches and modulated oxygen partial pressure (PO2) to create three treatments: normoxic (NRM, 20.3 kPa O2), brooding [BRD, PO 2 profile typical of clutch PO2 (PO2clutch) in maternally brooded clutches, 15.8-19.3 kPa O2] and low (LOW, predicted PO2 profile of maternally brooded PO2clutch if females did not make postural adjustments, 14.4-18.6 kPa O2). Using various metrics from ∼12 days pre-hatching to 14 days post-hatching, we demonstrated that NRM offspring were larger, faster and stronger than BRD offspring. As only hatchling heart mass differed between BRD and LOW treatments (LOW > BRD), postural adjustments may not alleviate hypoxia-related costs to embryos. Our results demonstrate that parental care may represent a compromise between competing developmental needs and thus entails obligate costs to the offspring.
KW - Adaptive significance
KW - Children's python (Antaresia childreni)
KW - Offspring quality
KW - Respiration
KW - Snake
KW - Trade-off
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U2 - 10.1111/j.1095-8312.2009.01280.x
DO - 10.1111/j.1095-8312.2009.01280.x
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:70349226727
SN - 0024-4066
VL - 98
SP - 414
EP - 421
JO - Biological Journal of the Linnean Society
JF - Biological Journal of the Linnean Society
IS - 2
ER -